Digging for fossils in the Petrified Forest

By Tom Kaye

The sky was crystal clear as my wife Carol and I geared up for our first day “on expedition” at Petrified Forest National Park in northern Arizona. This trip was particularly exciting for us because Petrified Forest had recently acquired a huge new tract of land and we, along with several colleagues from the Burke Museum, were the first team going in to look for fossils!

Specifically, we were looking for fossils of huge predators from 210 million years ago during the Triassic Period. We knew that most of the fossils we found would belong to extinct groups known as aetosaurs and phytosaurs. The former sported armor plates and foot-long spikes to ward off attacks. The latter were the Triassic equivalent of crocodiles: aquatic predators that you didn’t want to mess with.

Hunting for fossils isn’t as glamorous as it’s cracked up to be. It was never less than 100 degrees on the desert floor thanks to the sun’s reflection. We wore SPF 50 sunblock made for children so it didn’t sting when the sweat runs in your eyes. We were almost never in sight of anyone else. And the best fossils are ALWAYS the farthest from the truck.

So, I hope you enjoy the pictures and know that you’re getting the best parts of the trip right here!

Next steps for Seattle mammoth tusk

UPDATED 3.20.14

The Seattle Mammoth had a Twitter account up and running within a day of its tusk being discovered, but when it comes to next steps for the tusk itself, the pace may be a bit more... well, glacial.

Step 1: Stabilize

"For every day you spend collecting something, you can spend weeks,
months or even years getting the preparation work done."
—Bruce Crowley, Burke Museum Paleontology Lab Manager

Unearthing a Fossil: Giant Turtle Edition

We're often asked what it takes to get a fossil out of the ground and ready for research and museum display. The answer: it can take weeks, months or even years worth of work.

In this short time-lapse video, Burke Museum fossil preparator Bruce Crowley walks us through the process with our giant turtle fossil—from digging it out of the ground and wrapping it in a jacket, to chipping away tiny bits of rock with a series of miniature jack hammers.

Meet Our Giant Turtle

Last summer the Burke's fossil preparator, Bruce Crowley and a team of volunteers excavated a giant turtle - but finding it was only the beginning.

The fossil was first spotted on this rocky outcrop. Bruce and volunteers dug around the area where the bone was visible to make sure they got every piece of the fossil.

Enough of the bone was showing to tell that they belong to a prehistoric soft-shelled turtle (the family Trionychidae). The geology of the area tells us that it's about 49 million years old.

Bruce wheels in the giant turtle.

The fossil and the rock surrounding it were covered - first with aluminum foil (or paper towel or toilet paper), then with plaster. The aluminum foil prevents the plaster for sticking to any exposed bone, and makes it easier to remove once it's back at the museum.





Inside this plaster jacket are the fossil remains of a 49-million-year-old turtle. But for the moment, it's covered in rock and it's heavy.

Now that the jacket is in the fossil prep lab at the Burke, the team can begin to remove the rock that surrounds the bones.

Once the rock is removed, the turtle could prove to be the biggest fossil turtle in the Burke's collection.

Bruce uses a cast cutter to open the plaster field jacket. The black tube in the upper left of the photo is a vacuum to suck up plaster dust and dirt. Bruce wears a mask to protect his lungs from plaster powder.

The fossil prep setup. Bruce uses a vacuum cleaner to clean up dust in the work area.

After a couple weeks of work, fossil bone is exposed. It may not look like much, but what you see here represents a lot of work.

The sandbags are used as wrist rests while Bruce works on the bone with air-powered "micro jacks" - tiny, miniature, hand-held jack hammers.

In this close-up of the work area, taken about 2 weeks after the field jacket was first opened, you can see part of the fossil bone exposed. The orange stuff in the upper right is glue to keep the rock from splitting while Bruce is working and breaking the fossils inside.

You can see the giant fossil turtle this Saturday at the Burke's annual Dino Day. From 10 am (9 am if you're a Burke member!) to 4 pm, get an up-close look at the turtle and talk to Bruce and other Burke paleontology experts. 

Posted By: Winifred Kehl, Communications

The Dinosaur in the Lobby

Paraphysornis brasiliensis

Like many natural history museums, the Burke has a dinosaur in the lobby. Ours just happens to be a terror bird. (All birds are dinosaurs, but not all dinosaurs are birds!) In honor of this year's Dino Day, meet our terror bird.

The theme of Dino Day this year is "Predators and Prey"—and terror birds were top predators. These giant flightless South American birds had huge hooked beaks and sharp claws. Ranging in size from the 3-foot-tall Psilopterus lemoinei to the 10-foot-tall Brontomis burmeisteri, they probably killed their prey by stabbing it with their hooked beak. Their strong legs might have helped hold down struggling prey while the beak stabbed and ripped it.

Terror bird foot

As for who they ate, we can't be sure. Larger terror birds probably could have eaten small- to medium-sized mammals.

There are no birds alive today close enough to terror birds to tell us exactly how they lived and hunted. Modern large, flightless birds—ostriches, emus, rheas, and cassowaries—are not hunters (although they can be dangerous). Terror birds' closest living relatives, the seriema, may be close to what the smallest terror birds looked and acted like.

Terror bird head

The Burke's terror bird is a cast (replica) of Paraphysornis brasiliensis. It lived in Brasil 23 million years ago.



Dino Day 2012 is coming up on Saturday, March 3rd!

Posted by: Winifred Kehl, Communications

Our Favorite Fossils - Anatotitan

My left hand compared to Anatotitan's left foot.

It's true that ugly fossils are important, but that doesn't make giant duck feet any less interesting!

Anatotitan means "large duck" but the critter in question was actually a duck-billed dinosaur (a hadrosaurid). They grew up to 39 feet long - 6 feet short of your average school bus. At that size, it's no wonder his (or her!) foot dwarfs my hand. My palm is about the size of one of his (or her!) toe bones.

Anatotitan lived during the Late Cretaceous - 68 to 65.5 million years ago - at the same time as Tyrannosaurus rex, Velociraptor, pterosaurs, small mammals like Eomaia, marine reptiles and birds. The Cretaceous ended with one of the largest mass extinctions in Earth's history.

Montana (starred) during the Late Cretaceous. (Dr. R. B.)



This fossil was found in the Hell Creek formation in Montana in 1987. University of Washington's Dr. Greg Wilson and his lab dig for fossils and what they find ends up here at the Burke!

You can see this very Anatotitan fossil at the Burke's Dino Day (and you might notice that it's featured on the Anatotitan's Wikipedia page!)

Posted By: Winifred Kehl, Communications

Science Behind-the-Scenes: Paleontology Edition (Part 1)

 Oligocene fossils fill this cabinet.

Have you ever been to the Burke and wondered what's in the rest of the building? Behind the exhibits (actually, under them, around them, and above them!) are offices, the exhibit workshop, and enough cabinets full of wonder to make Indiana Jones jealous.

In this edition of the new feature Science Behind-the-Scenes, meet the Burke's fossil collection and find out the secret of our ugly fossils!

Our gorgeous Xiphactinus guards the ugly palm.

As a paleontologist (someone who studies dinosaurs and other prehistoric life), my favorite cabinets are, of course, the ones filled with fossils. And the Burke has a lot of fossils – over 3 million – including plants, animals, invertebrates (like snails), and even fossilized pollen. Only a few of the Burke's fossils are on display because there's just not enough room to show them all. You can visit dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts in the Life and Times exhibit or see fossilized plants and pollen in the Estella Leopold display under the giant Xiphactinus.

The Ugly Palm

One secret about the fossils that you do get to see on display – they're usually the pretty ones, but not necessarily the most important. Many of the fossils in the cabinets are pretty ugly – but ugly fossils are important! It's not common for living things to fossilize when they die – conditions have to be just right – and every fossil can tell us something about the past.

A great example of this is the fossilized palm plant in the Estella Leopold display. The palm looks like a dark brown bug splat on a grey rock, and it's covered in glue and surrounded by plaster. But this is the first and only palm fossil from the area it was found and it tells us a lot about what that area was like millions of years ago because palm plants need a warm and wet environment to live. Without this ugly fossil, we might not know as much as we do about how the climate in North American has changed over millions of years.

A drawer full of oreodont teeth.

Another fossil treasure that might look like trash is this drawer full of teeth. What good is a drawer full of teeth if you don't have the skull that goes with them? As it turns out, teeth – even without the rest of their bodies – are great for paleontologists to study. Teeth are really hard and preserve better in the fossil record than other bones. Teeth can even tell us whose skull they came from. A mammal paleontologist can tell the teeth of different mammals apart just by looking at them (and maybe using a few reference books). So a drawer full of teeth can tell us what kinds of animals lived in an area and how many of them there were.

And that can tell us all sorts of other things, like how animal communities change, so stay tuned for the Paleoecology edition of Science Behind-the-Scenes! And look for more Science Behind-the-Scenes at the Burke to learn about the mammal, bird, fish, and DNA collections, the collection managers who make research at the Burke possible, and the scientists who use the collections  –  and what they've discovered.
Posted by: Winifred Kehl, Communications

Ask the Burke: Bird or Dinosaur?

This Ask the Burke is based on a question from Adena Mooers, a reader from Bellingham. Her question was:

“When a three toed footprint fossil is found in sandstone in Washington, how can you tell if it is a dinosaur/lizard or a large bird? We have recently had Diatryma footprints found in Whatcom County. They look very similar to the dinosaur footprint we saw at the Burke last Friday.”

Burke Museum Paleontology experts answered:

Great question. If you find a fossil footprint and want to determine whether it was a bird or a dinosaur, here are a few tips:

We all know what a typical bird’s foot looks like. Most birds have four toes. And in most species, the first toe (digit I) points backwards. The second, third and fourth toes are counted from the inside of the foot (digits II, III and IV). Chicken feet are probably the most familiar example.

Birds and dinosaurs are closely related, so it may be difficult to them apart. The currently recognized distinction is that “dinosaurs” include two groups: the birds, or avian dinosaurs, and the “non-avian dinosaurs.” But, many non-avian dinosaurs have feet that are very similar to typical bird feet.

And we have all seen bird tracks. How do bird tracks differ from non-avian dinosaur tracks?

For most birds, flying is the principal means of locomotion. So bird feet have long and slender toes that consist mostly of bone, tendon and scaly skin. For the non-avian dinosaurs, their mode of travel is by foot and their feet are relatively more robust. Comparing animals of the same size, the non-avian dinosaur foot will be more heavily built.

Fossilized heron tracks from approximately 50 million years ago, on display in the
Burke Museum’s Life and Times of Washington State exhibit.

Bird footprints are characterized by: slender digit impressions, impressions of three front digits (digits II, III and IV) and a fourth posterior digit (digit I), the front digit impressions (digits II, III and IV) converge, and lastly, there is usually a wide angle between digits II and IV.

In most cases, bird footprints are quite distinctive. However, as you can tell, determining a species from a fossilized track is an exercise in deductive reasoning.

The Burke Museum partners with the Seattle PI's Big Blog to answer commonly asked questions about the natural and cultural history of our region. This post originally appeared on the Big Blog on July 27, 2011.

Got a question for next time? Send it here!

The Story of the Stabbing Cat

Ben Witte had always said he wanted to find a “stabbing cat.” Though trained as a classical pianist, Ben was an avid amateur fossil hound and his holy grail was the skull of a saber-toothed cat. In the summer of 1963, he was looking forward to another trip to the rich fossil beds in the Badlands of South Dakota with his wife, Bev and a small party of friends. In those days, Bev was an artist, experienced in both commercial and fine art.

When the group arrived, Ben and a friend went off to search. At that time, you didn’t need a permit to search for (or cart off) fossils. Ben and his friend split up to examine either side of a rocky ridge. Nosing along, he noticed something protruding from the ridge that looked suspiciously like the two long canine teeth of a small cat.

“There they were,” recalls Bev, “just sticking out of the rock… the teeth of his stabbing cat.” Ben had been in such a hurry to get to the search that he didn’t even have a backpack with him. He and Bev returned with enough sacks to carry off “every bit of rock that looked like it might hold a bone.” It took over an hour and a half to gather it all, but when they did, they had enough to one of the most complete specimens of Hoplophoneus ever found at that time.

Hoplophoneus fossil

 

It took several years for Ben's discovery to be displayed at the Burke. Bev didn’t begin to volunteer at the museum until 1964 so before she was hired as a preparator in 1968, Hoplophoneus waited at home. The large concretionary hunks of stone in which the fossil was embedded had to be removed by sandblaster and small bits needed removal with a vibrating tool. When the fossils were cast, Bev made molds of the skull and pelvis and Camille Evans and Steve Nelson helped with the rest of the bones. For assembly, the team relied on books describing cat anatomy, as well as in-house training provided by the museum. A placement challenge was a strange long, thin piece that turned out to be a piece of the clavicle. Later, they heard from well-known paleontologist Robert Bakker that the arms should have been placed elbows slightly out, given the arboreal nature of the animal. “We always meant to reposition those arms,” said Bev, “but never got around to it.”

But the biggest obstacle was Ben’s attachment to the skull. Even though he and Bev had already generously donated two brontothere mandibles they had collected, he was loath to part with this iconic piece of his fabulous find, his “stabbing cat.” Now his “stabbing cat” is on display for all to enjoy.

About Bev Witte: Married to Ben Witte, Bev worked for the Burke as a preparator from 1968 till her retirement in 1998. She said she got the job because she had already learned how to use the preparation as a volunteer. After retirement she volunteered two days a week at the Burke for many years, only recently cutting back to one.

Bev Witte with fossils at the Burke Museum

Submitted by: Peg Boettcher, Communications

We thank Bev Witte for her time, patience, and wonderful story.

Antarctica Fossils Have Arrived!

If you’ve been an intrepid reader of the Burke Blog for a while, you have probably heard of Burke Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology Dr. Christian Sidor and his graduate students’ research trip to Antarctica this winter.  Well, we have an update: some fossils from Antarctica have arrived at the Burke Museum! 

The fossils were discovered during Christian’s most recent research trip to Antarctica in Dec. 2010 – Jan. 2011. All of the fossils date from the Triassic era, ranging from 250—240-million-years-old. The research trip yielded three exciting finds; one is a large amphibian skull, which may be a new species. Another is a Lystrosaurus, a relative to mammals. This find is significant because it provides proof of the continental shift that divided the once existing supercontinent Pangaea. The third find is Prolacerta, an early distant relative to the dinosaurs.



Dr. Christian Sidor in Antarctica



Posted By: Andrea Barber, Communications

The Sea-Tac sloth

Washington State is home to many amazing fossil discoveries. You may have heard about some finds that sound like tall-tales, like a giant sloth found in an unexpected place. So you ask the Burke Museum:

Q: Is it true that a giant ground sloth was found at Sea-Tac International Airport?

A: Yes! Fifty years ago remains of a giant ground sloth, termed Megalonyx, were unearthed as construction crews were installing a lighting system along a runway at Sea-Tac airport. Nearly two-thirds of the sloths bones were perfectly preserved, with only the skull and some of the neck and limb bones missing. Casts were taken from another Megalonyx specimen and were used to complete the skeleton that you can see on display at the Burke Museum.

Megalonyx and other types of giant sloths roamed North America during the Pleistocene epoch (2.5 million to 12,000 years ago) eating plant materials, roots, and tubers and fending off attacks from saber-toothed cats.

For history buffs, the first Megalonyx fossil discovered in the United States was by the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. He found it in 1796 in a saltpeter mine in what is now West Virginia.

Want to learn more about the Sea-Tac Sloth? Watch this video created by Mary Jean, Kelsie and Rachel, students in the University of Washington’s COM460 class.
 

 

The Burke Museum partners with the Seattle PI's Big Blog to answer commonly asked questions about the natural and cultural history of our region. This post originally appeared on the Big Blog on April 2.

Have a question to Ask the Burke? Send it here!

Updates from Antarctica

Two weeks ago, a team of paleontologists from the museum began their journey to Antarctica for a two-month fossil hunting expedition. If you missed the video we posted about what the actual trip down to the southern-most continent is like, watch it here.

Well, they made it:

Exiting the plane at McMurdo Station in Antarctica.

The Burke team is joined by scientists from The Field Museum, Augustana College, the University of Alberta, and the Iziko South African Museum. Together, the group is looking for dinosaurs and other fossils in the Transantarctic Mountains.

If you’re curious to know more about what it’s like to conduct field work in such an extreme place as Antarctica, The Field Museum has an excellent expedition website with lots of totally fascinating information about this 2010-11 Antarctic expedition.

I easily got sucked into the site, which includes photos of camp life, dispatches from the field, and more about the fossils that have been found in Antarctica so far. Here are three surprising things I learned from The Field Museum’s expedition site:

• Back in the day (i.e. 250 million years ago), the Earth had no polar ice caps. Antarctica was part of the super-continent Pangaea and was actually temperate in climate, hence the abundance of plant and animal fossils from species that would never survive in polar Antarctica today.

• Of the species found in Antarctica so far, many were wholly new to science, such as the first dinosaur found on the continent, Crylophosaurus.

• Because of the severe cold and altitude, many of the traditional tools used to stabilize fossils (e.g. fossils and glue) don’t work in Antarctica. As a solution, excavators will wrap small fossils in toilet paper to protect them in transit back to the United States.

Before leaving Chicago to meet up with our crew from Seattle in Antarctica, two of the paleontologists from The Field Museum recorded this video about their expedition. Watch it to learn more about what their goals are for this trip:




Find more online at The Field Museum.

Posted by: Julia Swan, Communications




Dinosaurs in Antarctica? – Antarctica Video Report #1 from The Field Museum on Vimeo.

Video: how do you get to Antarctica?

Think your holiday travel plans are extreme? Can you imagine if you were traveling to Antarctica? That's exactly what Burke Museum curator of vertebrate paleontology Christian Sidor and two UW graduate students, Adam Huttonlocker and Brandon Peecock, are doing this Sunday, as they depart for a two-month trip to search for fossils in Antarctica. Along with an intrpeid group of paleontologists and geologists from across the country, the Burke team will explore the rocks of the central Transantarctic Mountains for evidence of ancient life.

So how does one actually get to Antarctica? Unsurprisngly, it's not quite as simple as just booking a flight. I sat down with Adam and Brandon the week before their trip to talk more about what it takes travel to the world's harshest, coldest continent. In this short video, they discuss what it will be like to arrive in Antarctica for the first time:


Stay tuned for more stories from their trip.

Posted by: Samantha Porter, Operations

National Fossil Day!

UPDATE: National Fossil Day is today! The galleries were busy this morning with families visiting the museum. Our educators had stations set up throughout the museum for kids to touch fossils and even practice digging for them. Here are some photos:

Posted 10/11/10:

This Wednesday is the first annual National Fossil Day, and in honor of this exciting occasion, read up on this small fossil that supports a big timeline of the history of Washington State: Murex sopenahensis (pictured above), is a type of rock snail fossil that can be found in the Burke Museum’s marine fossils collection. Although it is only 3 centimeters tall, this 40-million-year-old murex snail fossil provides evidence that the climate of Washington State was much warmer than it is today. Murex snails are carnivorous and only live in in subtropical seas; at the time this snail lived, the present location of Interstate 5 would have been beachfront! Murex snails would have lived in the Seattle area surrounded by palm trees and relatives of banana plants. However, as the world’s temperatures cooled, these tropical snails became extinct on Washington’s coastlines, leaving only their fossils behind.

Come learn more about paleontology at the Burke on Wednesday, Oct. 13 from 10 am – 4 pm and help us celebrate National Fossil Day! For event details, click here.

Posted by: Andrea Barber, Communications

Can you guess what it is?

For the past several months, we’ve been inviting Burke Museum Facebook fans to play a weekly game on our Facebook page we call “Collections Close Up.” Each week, we post a cropped picture of something from the museum collections and ask our fans to guess what it is. The next day, we reveal the full picture. The goals of this game are to expose our fans to the breadth of objects and specimens in the Burke collections and to promote interactivity on our Facebook page.

Here are a few samples from Collections Close Up. How many of these photos can you recognize? Click “More” below the photos to find the answers. Follow the Burke on Facebook to participate in the game!

More...

Answer: Petrified wood known as “Araucarioxylon arizonicum” from the Chinle Formation in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park. This petrified wood comes from an extinct species of conifer that is related to the Monkey Puzzle trees that grow in South America. Araucarioxylon arizonicum is the state fossil of Arizona.

Answer: Snowflake Obsidian. Obsidian is a natural glass that was once molten magma. The "snowflakes" in this type of obsidian are quartz crystals that developed over time as the Obsidian turns from glass to rock.


Answer: Gable mask from Papua New Guinea. These masks are placed on the eaves of Middle Sepik ceremonial houses. These houses represent a mythical woman who is the origin of all life and protects the inhabitants of the house. The building itself is her body and the gable mask represents her face.

Answer: Chinese pangolin, also known as Manis pentadactyla. Despite their scaly appearance, pangolins are mammals; this one is part of the Burke's mammalogy collection.

So, how'd you do?

Posted by: Julia Swan, Communications

Road Trip Idea: Visit the Stonerose Interpretive Center!

If you’re looking for something to do over the upcoming weekend, a road trip may come to mind. While deciding on your destination, consider taking a trip to the Stonerose Interpretive Center in Republic, Washington. This 5-1/2 hour drive from Seattle is well worth your time. Stonerose has breathtaking fossils and an Eocene fossil bed where you can search for fossils yourself!

While preparing for the Burke Museum’s Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway exhibit, paleontologist Kirk Johnson and artist Ray Troll took their own road trip to the Stonerose Interpretive Center. In the video below, Kirk shows some of the amazing fossils at Stonerose and discusses the importance of the collaboration between science and art.





Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway closes on May 31st, so make a stop at the Burke before you hit the road to check out some fossils from the Republic area. You may even discover some interesting places to stop and search for Washington’s prehistoric past like Ray and Kirk did along the way.

Before you head off on your own fossil adventure, be sure to double check the visitor information section of Stonerose’s website for holiday availability and fossil excavation rules. Happy fossil hunting!

Posted By: Andrea Barber, Communications

Favorite New Acquisitions: Part 2

Yesterday, we posted a blog about some of our curators’ favorite new acquisitions over the last year. In the second part of this mini-series, we look at some of the staff’s favorite prehistoric acquisitions at the Burke in 2009.

Paleobotany curator Caroline Stromberg’s favorite specimens of 2009 are unidentified fossil flowers from the early Middle Eocene (50 million years ago) McAbee Flora, Cache Creek, British Columbia. Fellow paleobotany museum research associates Rick and Tad Dillhoff donated these fossils as part of a larger collection. “These little fragile flowers are among my favorites because they look just like delicate ink drawings on the rock and they give us a rare glimpse of everything in life's history that we don't know about: all the millions and millions of now extinct and unknown species that once lived on this planet.”

Liz Nesbitt, Curator of Paleontology’s pick is a fossil seastar from Olympic National Park that is currently on public view at the Burke. Located in the new acquisitions case as a single display, the seastar is approximately 15-million-years-old, and it is the only fossil we have from that area. This find is particularly significant because seastars are exceptionally rare in the fossil record. The seastar was collected by Olympic Park Scientists and the Burke is keeping the fossil for the park in trust.

Christian Sidor, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology’s favorite new acquisition is a 49-million-year-old brontothere skull, belonging to the genus Palaeosyops. A distant relative of tapirs and horses, the skull was found by Bruce Crowley in Southwestern Wyoming in the Bridger Formation.



Why is it his favorite? “It is almost perfectly three-dimensionally preserved, which is quite rare for fossils, and I think it is destined for exhibit at some point.”

We hope you enjoyed learning about a few of the many interesting pieces we have at the Burke. For more information on our collections and research, click here.

Posted By: Andrea Barber, Communications

Behind the scenes with Ray Troll

Ever painted a giant T-Rex onto a wall? I have! With expert instruction from celebrated Alaskan artist Ray Troll, a group of volunteers came together this week in a make-shift studio down in Magnuson Park to paint five large wall murals for the upcoming Burke exhibit Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway, featuring Troll’s latest work.

Troll has hunkered down in Seattle for the past two weeks to create these murals showcasing some of his favorite subjects: dinosaurs, killer pigs, hamburgers, and giant ammonites. The fantastical murals will ultimately hang in the gallery alongside dozens of actual fossils from the Burke’s own paleontology collections beginning December 19th --when the exhibit opens.

The Burke Museum is partnering with Ray Troll and Seattle-born paleontologist Kirk Johnson (who together wrote a book called Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway) to present this new exhibit exploring the abundance of fossils in our midst - and specifically in Washington State - and how fossils shed light on Earth’s past.

As you can see, Ray Troll’s recent “art happening” was both fun and productive:

Ray's team of friends and volunteers worked tirelessly to produce large mural reproductions, such as "Sleeping with the Ichthyosaurs"

Ray Troll grabs a paintbrush for some detail work on "Night of the Ammonites"

Once finished, these murals will hang in the Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway gallery alongside real fossils

I'm not the only one who learned to paint with Ray. Burke Museum director Julie Stein also jumped at the chance to pick up a paint brush. When I asked her how it went, she told me, "My friend Edie and I were afraid we would paint outside the lines. Ray showed us how he adds highlights and we discussed how he comes up with these ideas (he dreams about them!). This was very fun!"

P.S. - Mark your calendars for opening day of Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway Saturday, December 19, when Ray will be on hand to give tours of the exhibit.

Posted by: MaryAnn Barron Wagner, Communications

Saber teeth, killer pigs, ancient fish, oh my!

Although it doesn't open for another four months, many of us here at the Burke are already quite busy preparing for the next major exhibition, Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway. Read all about the exhibition, which combines whimsical artwork by Ray Troll with real fossils from the Burke's collection to answer (and ask!) questions about evolution, extinction, and geologic time.

I'm quite excited about the fact that several of the fossil specimens that will be on display in this exhibit have never before been exhibited to the public. Some of these fossils are among the best in our entire paleontology collection! For example:

Hoplophoneus, an Oligocene-era saber-toothed cat

Entelodont, an omnivorous pig-like mammal, also from the Oligocene

Many ancient fish, like this one, millions of years old

I realize its not every job that requires you to set up a fossil photo shoot, but really, it was just another day at the natural history museum!

Posted by: Julia Swan, Communications

I see your fish lizard, and raise you a pliosaur

Posted by: Karyn Gregory

Remember last month when the Burke Museum installed its new marine reptile fossil, the ichthyosaur? Well, now there's another marine reptile making the news.

Nicknamed “The Monster” by scientists, this previously unknown species of ancient marine reptile is a type of pliosaur, which are short-necked variants of plesiosaurs.

It was discovered on Spitspergen in 2006, in the Arctic island chain of Svalbard. After excavation and partial articulation, the researchers are now certain they can claim that their pliosaur find is the largest ever on record. From the BBC News article today:

…Dr Jorn Hurum, from the University of Oslo Natural History Museum, said the Svalbard specimen is 20% larger than the previous biggest marine reptile - another massive pliosaur from Australia called Kronosaurus.

"We have carried out a search of the literature, so we now know that we have the biggest [pliosaur]. It's not just arm-waving anymore," Dr Hurum told the BBC News website.

"The flipper is 3m long with very few parts missing. On Monday, we assembled all the bones in our basement and we amazed ourselves - we had never seen it together before."

The Burke’s own plesiosaur, a long-necked type known as the elasmosaur, is on display in our long-term exhibit The Life and Times of Washington State.

- Karyn

Photos:

Top: Newly discovered pliosaur flipper, photo by J. Hurum.
Bottom: Plesiosaur suspended from above in Life and Times.